Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/570

Rh 544 SCOTT England, and in the next twenty-eight years completed an almost incredibly large number of new churches and " restorations," the fever for which was fomented by the Ecclesiological Society and the growth of ecclesiastical feeling in England. In 1844 Scott won the first premium in the competition for the new Lutheran church at Hamburg, a noble building with a very lofty spire, designed strictly in the style of the 13th century. In the following year his partnership with Moffat was dissolved, and in 1847 Scott was employed to renovate and refit Ely cathedral, the first of a long series of English cathedral and abbey churches which passed through his hands. In 1851 Scott visited and studied the architecture of the chief towns in northern Italy, and in 1855 won the competition for the town-house at Hamburg, designed after the model of similar buildings in north Germany. In spite of his having won the first prize, another architect was selected to construct the building, after a very inferior design. In 1856 a competition was held for designs of the new Government offices in London ; Scott obtained the third place in this, but the work was afterwards given to him on the condition (insisted on by Lord Palmerston) that he should make a new design, not Gothic, but Classic or Renaissance in style. This Scott very unwillingly consented to do, as he had little sympathy with any styles but those of England or France from the 13th to the 15th century. In 1862-63 he was employed to design and construct the Albert Memorial, a very costly and elaborate work, in the style of a magnified 13th-century reliquary or ciborium, adorned with many statues and re- liefs in bronze and marble. On the partial completion of this he received the honour of knighthood. In 1866 he competed for the new London law-courts, but the prize was adjudged to his old pupil, G. E. Street. In 1873, owing to illness caused by overwork, Scott spent some time in Rome and other parts of Italy. The mosaic pavement which he designed for Durham cathedral soon afterwards was the' result of his study of the 13th-century mosaics in the old basilicas of Rome. On his return to England he resumed his professional labours, and continued to work almost without intermission till his short illness and death in 1878. He was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, and an engraved brass, designed by G. E. Street, was placed over his grave. In 1838 Scott married his cousin, Caroline Oldrid, who died in 1870; they had five sons, two of whom have taken up their father's profession. Scott's architectural works were more numerous than those of any other architect of the century ; unfortunately for his fame, he undertook far more than it was possible for him really to design or supervise with thought and care. He carried out extensive works of repair, refurnishing, and restoration in the following buildings : the cathedrals of Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Salisbury, Chichester, Durham, St David's, Bangor, St Asaph, Chester, Gloucester, Ripon, Worcester, Exeter, Rochester, the abbeys of Westminster, St Albaus, Tewkesbury, and countless minor churches. He also built the new Government offices (India, Foreign, Home, and Colonial), the Mid- land Railway terminus and hotel, and a large number of private houses and other buildings. His style was (with the one exception of the Government offices) a careful copy of architectural periods of the Middle Ages, used with a profound knowledge of detail, but without much real inventive power, and consequently rather dull and uninteresting in effect. As a "restorer" of ancient buildings he was guilty of an immense amount of the most irreparable destruc- tion, but any other architect of his generation would probably have done as much or even more harm. While a member of the Royal Academy Scott held for many years the post of professor of archi- tecture, and gave a long series of able lectures on mediaeval styles, which were published in 1879. He wrote a work on Domestic Architecture, and a volume of Personal and Professional Recollections, which, edited by his eldest son, was published in 1879, and also a large number of articles and reports on many of the ancient build- ings with which he had to deal. Owing to his numerous pupils, among whom have been many leading architects, his influence was for some time very widely spread ; but it is now rapidly passing away, mainly owing to the growing reaction against the somewhat narrow medievalism of which he, both in theory and practice, was the chief exponent. SCOTT, JOHN. See ELDON, EARL OF. SCOTT, MICHAEL. See SCOT, MICHAEL. SCOTT, SIR WALTER (1771-1832), poet and novelist, was born at Edinburgh on 15th August 1771. His pedi- gree, in which he took a pride that strongly influenced the course of his life, may be given in the words of his own fragment of autobiography. " My birth was neither dis- tinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country it was esteemed gentle, as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families both by my father's and mother's side. My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, well known by the name of Eeardie. He was the second son of Walter Scott, first laird of Raeburn, who was third son of Sir William Scott, and the grandson of Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition Auld Watt of Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that ancient chief- tain, whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow, no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel." Scott's desire to be known as a cadet of the house of Harden, and his ruling passion so disastrous in its ultimate results to found a minor territorial family of Scotts, have been very variously estimated. He himself, in a notice of John Home, speaks of pride of family as " natural to a man of imagination," remarking that, " in this motley world, the family pride of the north country has its effects of good and of evil." Whether the good or the evil preponderated in Scott's own case would not be easy to determine. It tempted him into courses that ended in commercial ruin ; but throughout his life it was a constant spur to exertion, and in his last years it proved itself as a working principle capable of inspiring and main- taining a most chivalrous conception of duty. If the ancient chieftain Auld Watt was, according to the anecdote told by his illustrious descendant, once reduced in the matter of live stock to a single cow, and recovered his dignity by stealing the cows of his English neighbours, Professor Veitch is probably right in holding that Scott's Border ancestry were, as a matter of literal fact, sheep- farmers, who varied their occupation by " lifting " sheep and cattle, and whatever else was "neither too heavy nor too hot." The Border lairds were really a race of shepherds in so far as they were not a race of robbers. Professor Veitch suggests that Scott may have derived from this pastoral ancestry an hereditary bias towards the observation of nature and the enjoyment of open-air life. He certainly inherited from them the robust strength of constitution that carried him successfully through so many exhausting labours. And it was his pride in their real or supposed feudal dignity and their rough marauding exploits that first directed him to the study of Border history and poetry, the basis of his fame as a poet and romancer. His father, a writer to the signet (or attorney) in Edinburgh the original of the elder Fairford in Red- gauntlet was the first of the family to adopt a town life or a learned profession. His mother was the daughter of Dr Rutherford, a medical professor in the university of Edinburgh, who also traced descent from the chiefs of famous Border clans. The ceilings of Abbotsford display the arms of about a dozen Border families with which Scott claimed kindred through one side or the other. His father was conspicuous for methodical and thorough in- dustry ; his mother was a woman of imagination and cul- ture. The son seems to have inherited the best qualities of the one and acquired the best qualities of the other. The details of his early education are given with great precision in his autobiography. Stuart Mill was not more minute in recording the various circumstances that shaped